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The Smiler - General Discussion

Last year was the 1st time I had been on the coaster since the crash and to some of you talking about the missed audio I had even forgot about it. The general pubic just see a coaster and want to ride it they don't care about the theming,audio or broken effects.
 
AT86 said:
If that were true then there wouldn’t be any theming on any rollercoasters at all.
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Exactly, theming adds so much more to a ride, even if the general public don't entirely appreciate it at first, people would so much rather ride a fully themed and impressive, clean looking ride than a barely maintained or plain looking one. Take Wicker Man, for example, it wouldn't be anywhere near the experience it is now if not for the giant statue, lighting, buildings, music, preshow. If it were just a plain old woodie, sure it'd bring a few people in, fans of wooden coasters would be happy with it and it might get decent numbers in opening year, but eventually it would just fade into obscurity and no one would really care all that much. But, with the theming added it's an entire experience, it keeps it from getting boring or stale and helps provide an exciting and complete experience every time.
 
From Towers' perspective, why would you spend the very limited budget on maintaining a ride you cannot market again, has an unshiftable tainted image and considering the structure isn't great, who knows how long until something moves far enough that it becomes very broken and is removed. Utter bodge job from start to finish. I'd love to see the structural issue sorted, the queue re-routed and cleaned up and all the profiling fixed on the ride and all the themeing to be fixed and cleaned up and all the announcements to be returned but I can't ever seeing it happening.
 
Poisson said:
From Towers' perspective, why would you spend the very limited budget on maintaining a ride you cannot market again, has an unshiftable tainted image and considering the structure isn't great, who knows how long until something moves far enough that it becomes very broken and is removed. Utter bodge job from start to finish. I'd love to see the structural issue sorted, the queue re-routed and cleaned up and all the profiling fixed on the ride and all the themeing to be fixed and cleaned up and all the announcements to be returned but I can't ever seeing it happening.
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Although, I love The Smiler and there are many legitimate issues that I would like to see addressed, there is no way they would be running it if the STRUCTUAL ISSUES had not been 100% resolved. They will take no chances whatsoever on this.
 
Poisson said:
From Towers' perspective, why would you spend the very limited budget on maintaining a ride you cannot market again, has an unshiftable tainted image and considering the structure isn't great, who knows how long until something moves far enough that it becomes very broken and is removed. Utter bodge job from start to finish. I'd love to see the structural issue sorted, the queue re-routed and cleaned up and all the profiling fixed on the ride and all the themeing to be fixed and cleaned up and all the announcements to be returned but I can't ever seeing it happening.
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I highly doubt it. They wouldn't have reopened it if they weren't willing to maintain it. Besides, it still draws in plenty of guests.
I hear that the pit has been jetwashed as well as the return of SRQ, so they are doing something.
 
Yeah, the pit got jetwashed and drsined recently, why bother if they were giving up on it? Plus, besides Wicker Man it had the longest queue times for pretty much the whole year. And that's running 3/4 trains usually.
 
I would think the ride's bad throughput doesn't help the queue times, but it is no doubt still very popular with guests.
 
I mean, they might as well add the theming back. The now removed letters that used to say things along the lines of 'time to get corrected', 'halfway corrected' and 'correction complete' left permanent marks on the walls so ypu can still see the outline of the words.

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Operations on The Smiler were excellent yesterday, actually much better than anywhere else in the park. The queue actually moved quite quickly which makes the entire experience much less awful.

The return of single rider is also a bonus and seemed to be implemented well. However on a couple of occasions full trains of single riders were being dispatched because batchers weren't sending the other queues up the stairs in time. Hopefully that is better managed as the season goes on.
 
Single rider got me 3 back to back walk on rides today. it seems to be running rougher than ever though - my bones ache
 
mrignuf said:
Single rider got me 3 back to back walk on rides today. it seems to be running rougher than ever though - my bones ache
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Interesting to hear you say the ride was "rougher than ever"; what row did you ride in, out of interest?

As for my opinion on The Smiler's roughness; I don't think it is quite as rough as some say it is (I found Saw at Thorpe Park to be far worse!). I'd personally say that I only really feel a rattle and a couple of light kinks here and there; nothing unbearable, by any means! However; I will certainly admit that I have seen a noticeable deterioration in the coaster's smoothness since it first opened in 2013, and oddly, I seem to have noticed this more after the incident; did they change the wheels or something, as I'd also say the coaster looks to run more quickly through some elements and makes a different sort of noise while running to what it did pre-incident?

While The Smiler has yet to teeter into the "rough enough to majorly impact my enjoyment" territory for me, I will certainly agree that it is not the smoothest of coasters; there are a couple of kinks here and there, and there are a couple of portions where you can definitely feel the train shaking. Not unbearably, but you can definitely feel it. I'd also say that the coaster has not exactly aged brilliantly compared to other coasters built in the same time period. I'd certainly say that I've seen more of a noticeable change in The Smiler's smoothness in the time it's been operating than I have with Thirteen and The Swarm, for example, which I'd say still run just as well as (if not better than) when I first rode them. I'd also say that Speed at Oakwood is smoother than The Smiler, despite being 7 years older. However, The Smiler is certainly far less rough than Saw at Thorpe Park, in my opinion, as I mentioned above. And I'd imagine that a few kinks here and there was probably difficult to avoid given the nature of the ride; I wouldn't imagine it would have been easy to cram close to 4000ft of coaster track in a space little bigger than the one your average Vekoma Boomerang takes up! From an engineering and layout standpoint, I'd say that The Smiler is almost a technical masterpiece in terms of how much they managed to cram into the area!

While we're on the topic of smoothness, I'd also like to mention another personal drawback of The Smiler; I personally feel that it is somewhat inconsistent, especially in recent years. While it is always a great ride to some extent, I feel that I certainly enjoy it noticeably more on some rides than I do on others. With some of my favourite coasters; Mako, Icon, The Swarm and Nemesis, to name just a few, you know that you are going to get a top-class ride on them before you ride them. As stupid as this may sound, I personally feel that with The Smiler, you don't know quite how it's going to ride until you ride it. For some demonstration of my personal ideas about The Smiler's lack of consistency in recent times, here is a summary of all of my rides post-incident:
  • In April 2016, I rode the coaster in the front row and found that it had developed a bit of a rattle that it never had pre-incident, but I certainly wouldn't have called it unbearable by any means.
  • In July 2017, I rode the coaster 3 times in a mix of rows 2 and 4 and found that those 3 rides were probably the roughest I have had so far on The Smiler.
  • In March 2018, I rode the coaster in row 3 and thought it was absolutely brilliant; the rattle was there, but seemed less noticeable than normal, and the jolts seemed less noticeable than normal! That ride was probably the best I've had on The Smiler post-incident!
  • In September 2018, I rode the coaster on the back row and it seemed to be more towards what it was in July 2017 from a roughness perspective.
Despite this, The Smiler has never been unbearably rough in my eyes, and I still enjoy the ride. That layout just provides a real intensity rush, and when on top form, I personally feel that The Smiler is almost as good as the likes of The Swarm and Nemesis! The coaster still sits solidly at the #7 spot in my coaster rankings and I would still give it a solid 9/10 if I was asked to score it out of 10; it's just that I felt the issue of the coaster's smoothness might be an interesting one to discuss from an analytical point of view. Do you guys agree with me?
P.S. Sorry for the long post!
 
Rob said:
Single rider on The Smiler was brilliant on Saturday, only one person in the queue in front of us! Unadvertised single rider queues are clearly the way forward, I hope they continue to not be able to find where they put the signs.
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Ahhh you must have missed the srq when it was nearly to the bottom of the stairs :eek:
And people were still joining it. :tearsofjoy:
 
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